High court hears challenge to roadblocks

Published: Wednesday, October 04, 2000

WASHINGTON {AP} Supreme Court justices questioned whether roadblocks to catch drug dealers are one step on the path toward the sort of random questioning by police that the Constitution is supposed to forbid.

The court took a new look Tuesday at privacy rights versus the interests of law enforcement with the case of drug-search roadblocks that detain far more innocent motorists than criminals.

The court must decide whether the roadblocks set up by Indianapolis in 1998 are consistent with the accepted practices of border roadblocks to find illegal immigrants or random traffic stops to get drunks off the road.

The city admits that its primary aim was to catch drug criminals. Civil liberties advocates called the practice heavy-handed and risky, and asked the Supreme Court to ban it.

Justice Antonin Scalia pounced on a lawyer for the city, who argued that the practice is no more intrusive than the traffic stops that previously passed court muster.

"So you think the government could stop a car anywhere in the United States and look for illegal immigrants?" Scalia asked in mock surprise. "Simply stop the car and say, 'Can I see your papers, please?' "

The city's lawyer, A. Scott Chinn, replied that authorities would have to show a reason to suspect illegal immigrants were using a particular road, but he did not back off his argument that the drug checkpoints are a simple and effective way to find large amounts of drugs.

"The risk here is if we break down this barrier ... we will be faced with ever-increasing incursions that will be balanced away," by the argument that the benefit to the public good outweighs individual privacy concerns, replied Kenneth Falk, a lawyer for the Indiana chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.

The ACLU, which represents two detained motorists, argues that police do not have the right to use roadblocks to investigate criminal drug activity without good reason to suspect one motorist or another.

The court is reviewing a federal appeals court ruling that said the Indianapolis checkpoints probably amounted to unreasonable seizures. A Supreme Court decision, expected by June, will provide the court's latest word on the amendment's scope.